Suspects sought in Marion officer-involved shooting

MARION, Ind. — A Marion police officer, responding to a report of shots fired at 4th Street and Western Street Sunday morning, rolled into the suspects and their intended victim several blocks away and exchanged gunfire with an armed passenger in a white SUV.

“What was your Sunday morning like out here?” I asked John Thompson, Jr., who lives near the intersection of 1st Street and D Street where the shootout occurred.

“Just shooting two shots and three bullets fighting on the corner,” he said. ”The lady cop screamed and said, ‘He’s shooting! He’s got a gun!’ and shot back three times.”

Thompson said Marion police and Indiana state troopers, along with crime evidence technicians, blocked off the intersection for their investigation until late Sunday afternoon.

One home that officials studied was at the corner where the owner of the last 40 years was inside when she heard the gunfire.

”I said to Scott, my husband, ‘There’s a hole in our window.’ He said, ‘Well, those bullets went through our window.’ And then he turned and said, ‘and went through our cupboard door,’” she said. ”We’re just very grateful for God’s good graces that we weren’t standing there washing dishes. My husband’s a tall man, and he would have been right in the line of that.”

A piece of crime tech adhesive tape still marks the hole in the woman’s kitchen window.

Outside, just a couple of feet away, are scars in the siding and the door jamb left by other bullets.

The owner said the target of the shooting, a man in a hoodie, hid around the corner of her house until State Police took him into custody for questioning.

Early reports suggest detectives know the identity of at least the driver of the SUV, which fled.

The Indiana State Police have taken over the investigation. There were no reported injuries.